Interviewing the Interviewer: A Conversation with Michael Peppiatt
The acclaimed curator, author, and artist interviewer, Michael Peppiatt, was in New Haven recently where he discussed his recently published book, Interviews with Artists: 1966-2012. He also agreed to switch roles for a moment and answer some questions we were thrilled to have the opportunity to ask him.
Caroline Hayes—
Interviews with Artists: 1966-2012 includes two kinds of interviews: transcribed conversations and short studio visits. The latter, shorter interviews are interspersed with Peppiatt’s comments and observations; the interviewer masterfully combines the artist’s words with his own writing, creating an impression (or, “glimmering,” as Peppiatt puts it) of exchange. In the interview below, I’ve attempted to reflect this style and present a vision of the interviewer, his unique job, and his exceptional success in the field.
“I think on the whole, artists like doing interviews and I certainly have a lot of fun doing them,” Michael Peppiatt repeats quite regularly throughout our conversation. Peppiatt’s passion for his role as questioner to a field so elusive as the arts carries through every turn of discussion. His passion has grown out of a deep understanding of and confidence in the production that his role allows: “I think for artists, it’s an important process. They sort of blunder, or toil away in their studio and probably most of the time are not too sure, I would think, the best ones, what they’re doing. It’s quite nice to have someone sympathetic with whom you can have a conversation.”
Peppiatt began his career as a young journalist at The Observer at age 21, and later moved on to a magazine in Paris called Réalité. He was often sent to do interviews for the magazine and found that the challenge of conveying a person’s comments and reactions was a really stimulating way to write. Eventually, he accrued a vast number of interviews (and personal relationships) with artists he had once admired from afar. Despite such an impressive career, he remains humbled by the memories of his days as a young journalist: “I was very shy when I did my first interview, terribly shy, really.” Such shyness was difficult to imagine as our conversation turned toward his interactions with painter Francis Bacon.
He muses, “’Words are only approximate,’ I think is what Bacon said. If you could explain something in words, why bother to use paint?” In this way, Peppiatt understands the imperfection of the interviewer’s best tool, language, and greets the obstacle head on. He reasons, “[Just as language is only an approximate, art] is another medium of approximation.” He knows, “If you can pin it down then it probably means it’s not that strong an image anyhow.” Words will never entirely describe or qualify a powerful image, “So you circle around it, you approach it from different angles, you get a better view, you get a better understanding. It’s not a manual. The work of art continues to exist beyond the conversation.”
Peppiatt insists, when possible, on conducting his interviews in the artist’s studio. He uses this familiar environment to generate new and spontaneous questions. If there’s an awkward lull in the conversation, which Peppiatt confirms is common, the artist’s studio gives away clues that can help a stunted interview. Peppiatt imagines that “the studio is almost a participant in the interview,” moving the discussion forward and contributing to the portrait of the artist. When Peppiatt interviewed painter Hans Hartung in his home and studio in Antibes, France, Peppiatt’s description of the artist in his creative environment is one of the most revealing moments of the interview:
“Hartung’s insistence on perfection in every detail has produced a house in which maximum simplicity coincides with maximum comfort and the elegance that comes from being in complete harmony with the landscape. There is little furniture in the big, silent rooms and no paintings on the walls. ‘I don’t need paintings,’ the artist says. ‘If I want to look at something, I look out of the window at the trees…’”
My interview with Michael Peppiatt was coming to a close and, as if he knew just what an interviewer seeks, he ended our conversation with an inspiring thought on the nature of the interview: “In a sense it’s one of life’s great pleasures just to be able to talk and bounce ideas about and sort of feel that you’re alive. It is one way of feeling alive and I suppose a civilized one.”
Caroline Hayes is a student at New York University and former Yale University Press intern.
